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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Best Price to performance ratio"
Pros: Geforce 8800m Gts, 4 Gb Ram, Wireless Abilities
Cons: Screen, Keyboard
Summary: I?ve done my Research on the Gateway p-6860FX Gaming laptop. I hoping this review will help anyone else looking to buy this awesome laptop.
I will go with the Pros first:
1. 17 Inch Screen
2. Geforce 8800m Gts
3. B,G,A,N and Bluetooth 2.0 Wireless
4. 4 GB Ram
5. Maybe not the fastest Processer at 1.83 GHz, but at least as fast if not faster than my 2.8 GHz PD
6. Webcam and Mic
7. 320 GB Hard drive
8. Esata, HDMI, Vga, Gigabit Ethernet, Media Card Reader
9. Not very heavy if you carry in backpack
10. Number Pad next to keyboard
11. Hard switch for Wi-Fi
12. Large Track Pad with up and down and left to right scroll
13. It stays relatively cool because it has a large heat sink for both CPU and gpu.
14. The bottom does not get hot for regular use, but when playing Crysis or any other intensive game it can start to get hot.
15. Even when you are playing Crysis there is not much CPU heat, but there is tons of gpu heat. (Outside the laptop, not inside)
Now for Games:
1. COD4: Everything Maxed Out (never below 30 FPS)
2. Crysis: With first patch
DX10 1024x768, AA=No AA, Vsync=Disabled, 32 bit test, FullScreen
VolumetricEffects=High
Texture=VeryHigh
ObjectDetail=Medium
Sound=VeryHigh
Shadows=High
Water=VeryHigh
Physics=High
Particles=VeryHigh
Shading=High
PostProcessing=Medium
GameEffects=High
If you upgraded the processer to the 2.5 GHz then you probably could get everything at very high next to shaders and object quality and maybe shadows.
With all of those settings turned on I get 25 ? 35 FPS (Frames per Second) in open and 15 to 25 Fps in Fights.
Word in Conflict Demo:
With the resolution set to highest and everything else set to very high I would get around 25-30 FPS unless you zoom down into the fight then you get around 10-15 FPS.
Any other game you play will be on max graphics unless you go to a super high resolution like 1920x1200.
Hard drive Speed:
31.2 MB/s (Min) 60.4 MB/s (Max) 48.2MB (AVG) for around 3 min testing using HD Tune.
Super Pi: (1)1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU against (2)2.8 GHz Pentium D CPU
128K: (1) 2 sec (2) 4 sec
1 Million: (1) 31 sec (2) 46 sec
32 Million: (1) 27 min 35 sec (2) 38min 18 sec
Wireless Range with D-Link DIR-625 N Router:
40 Feet away though a floor and two walls. 4 Bars sometimes changing to 5, but I think this is not connected to N. So if it was then it would get even longer range.
Battery Life:
Battery Life is okay considering what?s inside this laptop. Playing the game Warrock lasted 1 hour and 15 min on max performance. Surfing the web would last over two hours depending on performance level and screen brightness.
Power usage: Max Performance / Screen brightness all the way up / Wi-Fi on
Just typing a Word Doc: (48 watts)
Playing Crysis: (102 watts)
Now For the Bad:
1. The Keyboard: (The shift key is too small and the arrow keys are right next to it; so when I type, I push the up arrow instead of shift. Also the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be and you can?t reprogram the Fn key for games.
2. The Screen: Compared to my Dell 2007FP 20 inch monitor, its does not look very good. All of the colors are washed out and the screen seems too bright.
3. Has to be polished to keep looking nice. Attracts finger prints easily.
4. Web Cam: Color is off and is laggy using Skype.
5. Microphone: Needs to be more sensitive
6. Mic Jack: Even though it recognized something being plugged into the Mic jack, it did not work. (Would just use internal Mic.)
Overall this laptop is great and half of the problems can be easily fixed as long as you?re not on the go. For $1250 with free game and 2 years no interest you can?t beat it.
For some more great info on the laptop similar to this, go here: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/2008/gateway-p6831fx/gateway-p6831fx-view-back.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx%3Fi%3D3273%26p%3D3%26cp%3D2&h=493&w=1920&sz=103&hl=en&start=139&sig2=6f_-zjnsFdHIYqKLV_xl9g&um=1&tbnid=SOtMcvsYAUL_wM:&tbnh=39&tbnw=150&ei=gsgoSP7RMoaWigHdrdTtCA&# 38;prev=/images%3Fq%3DP-6860FX%26start%3D126%26ndsp%3D21%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dcom.google:en-US:official%26sa%3DN:
